Materials Witness: September 2021

Monday, September 27, 2021

The Untold Truth of Magic Eraser

I am not at all surprised that Magic Erasers aren't anything more than microporous, abrasive melamine.

I'm kind of impressed at the Mr Clean folks for figuring out a way to market a very plain material to us as being a 'magic' cleaning product (and for folks who make and buy cheaper versions).

I'm less impressed with The King of Random's successors and their stupid experiments with Magic Erasers or idiots polishing their teeth (seriously) with Magic Erasers.

I did wish there was a little more science explanation of the material, so I turned to the gaming community...as you do, of course.

Monday, September 20, 2021

How Vegan Leather is Made From Mangoes | World Wide Waste

For much of this video it looks like they're make fruit leather like I would make at home, an industrial scale fruit roll-up effectively.

I'm not at all sure what the 'several additives' (1:10) that are added to 'turn the mango pulp into a leather-like material', but that's the interesting part that I want to know about.

Because otherwise, yeah, they're just making fruit jerky...and then coating it in (2:00) 'protective glaze'.

The tiny rectangles of fruit 'leather' are interesting, but the production clearly needs to get stepped up to get some continuous manufacturing going if they want to scale things up.

I do appreciate a good 'turning one man's trach into another man's treasure' story, though, and this looks like it could be a good one.

Monday, September 13, 2021

The life cycle of a t-shirt

It's a cotton t-shirt, right?

Cotton is a natural product, so it can't be all that rough on the environment, can it?

Water used to grow cotton...pesticides to grow cotton...ship cotton...blend/card cotton...weave cotton...treat with chemical dyes and bleaches...stich cotton by hand...ship cotton again...buy shirt...wash shirt...dry shirt...repeat the last two steps again and again...

Maybe we should reduce our need for new stuff.